20100226

(KPCC Wire Services) IRVINE — Assemblyman Chuck DeVore sent a letter to UC Irvine's chancellor asking him to ban the Muslim Student Union from campus following several of the group members' arrests while disrupting a speech by Israel's ambassador to the United States.

DeVore, (R-Irvine), who is seeking the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate seat held by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., also accused the Muslim Student Union of "passing the hat'' for Hamas at a fundraiser for the "terrorist organization'' last year.

"It's time to ban this organization from campus,'' DeVore said. "It's not contributing anything of value to the campus.''

DeVore's letter to UCI Chancellor Michael Drake requesting the ban of the Muslim Student Union follows the arrest of 11 students after allegedly disrupting a Feb. 8 speech by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren at the campus.

UCI Media Relations Director Cathy Lawhon said the university's response to DeVore's letter is that UCI officials are considering the allegations against the 11 students and the Muslim Student Union. The students and organization face a range of discipline from a warning to expulsion, but it is not known when officials will decide on punishment, Lawhon said. None of the 11 students who were arrested have been charged, according to court records.

The university is also still investigating the Muslim Student Union's fundraiser last year that critics say benefited Hamas.

The university has been roiled over permitting an anti-Semitic climate to fester on campus over the past several years.

20100225

The Washington Times Blogs: Apostasy killing of former Muslims could become widespread in the United States if the U.S. government and Americans don't "wake up," a panel of three former Muslims said on Capitol Hill Thursday.

The talk, hosted by three members of the new civil rights organization Former Muslims United, marked the first public appearance as a self-proclaimed "apostate" of Iranian journalist Amil Imani, one of the founders of the group. Imani and the panel's two other speakers, authors Nonie Darwish and Wafa Sultan, told the audience that ingrained American religious and ethnic tolerance and myths about Islam are combining to gravely threaten the West.

"Shi'a radical Islam and Wahhabism is coming to this country," Imani said. "There are 6,000 mosques in the United States now. All the money [we] put into gasoline comes back here and is used in the teaching of hate, violence, etc., etc." in American mosques, he said.

Mrs. Wafa Sultan, who said she regularly gets death threats and emails from people saying they will cut off her fingers and rape her daughters because she left Islam, said it is merely a myth that Islamic terrorists misinterpret 'true' Islam for nefarious purposes.

Westerners "don't want to judge anybody based on their [religion]," Sultan said, "[But] Islam is not a religion. Islam is a very dangerous political ideology. ... There is no such thing as radical Islam and regular Islam or spiritual Islam. ...There is only one Islam."
The response is proof of a silent, creeping tolerance in the West for radical ideology, a development that augurs very badly for a free society, panel members said.

"You might think the threat is over there in the Middle East," said Darwish, author of "Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel and the War on Terror." "The problem is, we have books in America teaching that apostates must be killed. ... The problems emanate from Muslim leadership in America. They won't sign any document that says, 'We are against shari'a.'"

Western governments seem oblivious to the apathy of supposedly legitimate organizations about apostasy killings and the growing ubiquity of fatwa (death warrant) issuances, the panel said.

"A fatwa of death can be issued from any country," Darwish said, citing the 2008 handing down from the Middle East by Al Qaeda of a fatwa on Dutch parliament member Geert Wilders for an "insulting" film Wilders made about the Koran. "Fatwas are issued on Arab T.V. on a regular basis. ... And these fatwas are following us right here in America. Why we are sleeping and not making a big deal about that is beyond me."

Darwish said if free reign for such practices continues, they "will change the culture in America. (They've) already changed the culture in Europe."

Robert Spencer introduced the next speaker – Stephen Coughlin – a former Pentagon Islamic law specialist who was fired from his job for his analysis of Islamic infiltration. Coughlin provided a clear and cogent analysis of the Islamic threat. He explained that the question of whether or not these terrorists are following ‘true’ Islam is irrelevant from a fact-driven perspective. They have repeatedly told us these are the reasons they fight jihad.

A vital part of Coughlin’s discussion dealt with the doctrine of abrogation within Islam. This doctrine states that Mohammed was given progressive revelation of Allah’s will, and that the later Koranic verses supersede and nullify earlier contradictory more peaceful verses. This is something that is recognized by all schools of Islamic jurisprudence. Coughlin also demonstrated that since the 9-11 commission report, political correctness has expunged words such as Muslim, enemy, Al-Qaeda and Islam from official government documents including the Ft. Hood massacre report. Coughlin:

“The 9-11 commission has been completely undermined. You cannot defeat an enemy you are not allowed to define. By definition, this administration has no strategy to defeat this enemy since they refuse to define it.”

20100217

Bar-Ilan University's Arabic-studies expert, Dr. Mordechai Kedar, clarifies his al-Jazeera's interviewer's error - why was Jerusalem, if never mentioned in the Koran, made holy by Islam? Kedar explains how it was done for political advantage. He asserts that in Islam, politics and religion make up two sides of the same coin.

Dr. Kedar achieved fame when being aggressively interviewed on Qatar-based, al-Jazeera Arabic Channel, he turned the tables on the show's host for international meddling in Israeli affairs.

Dr. Kedar will lecture on 17 Feb at UC Denver, on 18 Feb at UC Boulder, and on Fri-Sat at Young Israel of Flatbush. Naturally, security will be tight.

20100215

Neutralizing the mullah regime in the Islamic Republic is pivotal to any peace negotiations in the Middle East, not the other way around, says Dr. Tawfik Hamid in the Jerusalem Post.

Call to name and shame
This week, two Iranian sisters, Zohreh and Azar Kabiri, ages 27 and 28, respectively, were sentenced to death by stoning in Karaj, 40 km west of Tehran. It is their second sentencing: They've already received 99 lashes each at the hands of their government for the crime of "illegal relations," in a trial conducted without a defense attorney. The court decided to try them again for the same crime, now finding that they were guilty of actual "adultery" - an offense punishable by death in Iran.

20100209

Ambassador Michael Oren addressed an overflow audience on US-Israel relationship and global affairs at the Univ of Calif Irvine. He discussed the Zionistic element (support for the return of the people of Israel to their ancestral homeland) within America's founding and maturing, from John Adams, through Abraham Lincoln, to Harry Truman. He discussed Americans' widespread spiritual and social support for democratic Israel, the only land where rule of law guarantees free-speech in the Middle East. He discussed the evolution of the multi-faceted ties between the US and Israel- which strategic relationship began towards the end of the 1967 Six-Day War.

Amb. Oren noted the U.S. and Israel's shared values - spiritual and democratic, and their shared interests- economic and political - from allying to resisting Communism, to resisting Islamic-extremism, today.

He discussed the state of the current relationship between Washington and Jerusalem, vis a vis the Obama's administration's pressure to force the creation of a state of Palestine. He discussed Israel's considerations regarding the conditions of Palestinian sovereignty and prioritizing it over stopping nuclear proliferation within the Islamic world - which would extort the West with threats to leak nuclear-weapons into Islamic-extremists' hands.

U.C. Irvine, with a large Muslim enrollment, has been criticized for fomenting a climate of aggressive anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism through its Muslim Students Union. The M.S.U. organized a stream of students disrupting through the speech, ignoring appeals from Chancellor Paul Drake and Political Science Dept Director Mark Petraca. Police Chief Paul Hensley did not elect to position a uniformed police deterrence between the disrupting Muslims' seating sections and the Ambassador at the podium following repeated outbursts- and Muslim students continued to disregard faculty appeals- creating 10 disruptions. Amb. Oren walked out briefly, but Rabbi David Eliezrie relates that he elected to return on his dedication to the attendees, his Jewish perseverance, and the promise of his hosts to suspend or expel further disruptors.

Shalom Elcott, President and CEO of Jewish Federation Orange County, said the highly-orchestrated disruptions by the President of the Muslim Student Union (MSU) - who was arrested, along with one MSU board member and 10 other student protesters - constituted an embarrassment to the University and an insult to the broader community. “While we had hoped the administration would have been better prepared to thwart groups or individuals trying to harass Ambassador Oren, we do commend the University police for making arrests and taking action to escort the perpetrators out of the room,” says Elcott. “And, we are proud of the Ambassador not letting the disruptions stop him from completing his address. We will intensely monitor what actions the University administration will take in response to this evening’s event and will report our findings to the community,” says Elcott.

Israeli-American activist, Nurit Greenger, called upon Chancellor Michael Drake in a written appeal to seek full prosecution for those arrested students, including expulsion from UCI, and deportation of those who are here student visas. "They are not welcome here to try distorting our culture and way of life. We want civility restored at UCI and nothing less will suffice," Ms. Greenger wrote.

I kept thinking about Alwaleed -- his stake in News Corp., his stakes in Georgetown and Harvard -- and realized that as a leading scion of the so-called House of Saud (q: how many countries are named for their rulers?), a totalitarian theocracy whose foundational documents -- the Koran, the Sunnah, the Hadiths -- place it in direct ideological conflict with the US Constitution, he operates not just as a billionaire businessman, but also, inevitably, by virtue of who he is, as an agent of Saudi influence.

News Corp. wants to do business with him? Fine. But shouldn't News Corp.'s Fox News thus be required to register with the State Department as a foreign agent of Saudi Arabia? That's the question posed by this week's syndicated column:

20100201

Click to see the Program for 10th Annual Herzilya Policy ConferenceMonday 8:30 am - 21:30 Israel time, 10:30pm Sunday - 11:30 am Pacific timeTuesday 8:30 am - 21:30 Israel time, 10:30pm Monday - 11:30 am Pacific timeWednesday 8:30 am - 20:45 Israel time, 10:30pm Tuesday - 10:45 am Pacific timeWatch Live Video from 2010 Herzliya Conference during session hours. Highlights are available here a short while after the session finishes. Full archived sessions should be available a the day after they air.